Well, I did somehow manage to teleport myself from the sunny blue courts of Melbourne to the icy concrete sidewalks of New York City, but that hasn’t hampered my livescore-app-checking, scoreboard-watching, late-night-streaming, getty-browsing antics. I’m here, and I’m tennis blogging, just for you lovelies.

I do have a few housekeeping announcements to make, for starters:

1. The Australian Open, being the most awesome tournament of all time, and also the one I devote the most blood and guts to, is not over in my book. Because I still have heaps of photos, videos and indeed, juicy bits of stories for y’all, it is possible I will continue to mention it from time to time. Deal with it, embrace it, learn to love it. The summer is not yet over. Far from it.

2. I am a crap photographer, and I get tennis-blog-envy and retreat into my little cave when I see other bloggers posting awesome photo and video. I am now going to embrace my inadequacies and focus on what I love best – wordage. So, accept this as my apology for the rest of the year. The photos, if they are up, will be crap. If they are there at all. Just know I do my best (if clicking the little “enhance” auto-button on my iPhoto is considered my best).

3. After spending a life living in Australia, where 95% of tennis tournaments take place during the witching hours, my nocturnal self is finding it difficult to accustom myself to this world where tennis is played during the day. I can very well stay up for a night of tennis watching (hello, clay season) but I’m not quite sure how the employed do it. Watch scoreboard at work? Sure. But as for the rest, beats me. So apologies if my tennis watching in my new hometown is not up to scratch. I’m still as owlish as they come.

4. I love tennis. That’s just a public service announcement.

Let’s get back into it, shall we?

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The last drop of vodka has been drunk, the last headache pill has been popped, and we’ve finally given up begging for a hangover cure and just ridden the wave. Novak’s win was just a short week ago, but the parties in Belgrade are still going strong, if a notable presence missing from Rotterdam is anything to go by.

Wanna see how they party? We know how it began, we know how it continued.. but we sure as hell don’t know how it ends.

Now lucky we are the snapparazzi with a crappy point and shoot, because we’re about to show you what we do know:

It started with this:

Forget a man in a crazy Serbian wrestling, or perhaps rowing? Costume. The Yavise Nole was happening and happening loud. Serbians to the back, Serbians to the front, and a helluva heap of Serbians to the side. FYI, Yavise Nole means something along the lines of “say hello, Nole”. Why he would say Hello when about to serve for a championship is beyond me.
Which he then proceeded to do.

One of whom was happy to celebrate accordingly with the singing Serbians… his name is Uncle Djo.

By which time the party had begun.

Hardcore tennis fans may recall a sunny Sunday in Belgrade a few short months ago, where a country made sporting history, and promptly proceeded to make Youtube history with a series of golden celebratory videos that warmed the cockles of any Serbian fan. Viktor Troicki jumping on a car and dancing to trumpets? Why, thank you kindly.

This blatant display of gorgeous bromantic patriotism had us at ajde, and the Davis Cup envy only grew after Nole raised the championship trophy and thanked his country. Lucky we had the chance to be in Davis Cup video round 2, when the Serbians followed Nole to the broadcast compound in Garden Square.

Nole’s as good a party whore as the rest of us, so clearly he couldn’t be left out for long. Between interviews, the champion was standing on the platform, shaking his fist and singing along, cheering for his countrymen who were so beautifully proud of their sporting hero.

So much so that down came the shoes, those gorgeous red and blue and white Serbian symbols of awesome, thrown down to the two biggest cheerleaders of the group.